“It feels way better populated” isn’t the same thing as actually growing.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. Lemmy’s MAU has been hovering around the same relatively small level for months now. actually down from a year ago YOY. lemmy is contracting.
lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
^ its an objective fact based on raw numbers lemmy so nicely provides. we are down 2k MAU year over year.
The current stats literally track monthly active users, and we’re still talking about roughly tens of thousands of people, not sustained breakout growth.
And the wider Fediverse has the same retention problem: FediDB currently shows 14 million total accounts but only about 1.17 million monthly active users.
So maybe your personal moderation experience has been great. That’s completely valid. Mine hasn’t.
But “it got this far” isn’t evidence that the strategy is working. If the goal is critical mass, years of stagnation and mostly empty communities are evidence that something isn’t working.